At the one end of the spectrum we have the deniers who want a relentless exploitation of nature because in their greed they fear that there may be a limit to their endless craving for consumer goods. At the other end of the spectrum we have nature romantics and tree huggers, who have a romanticized view of nature that has nothing to do with reality.

In between, the voices of reason are being drowned out.

What the nature romantics don't want to understand is that the coronavirus didn't occur because people eat wild meat or that modern humans come into closer contact with animals then ever before. The latter notion is so absurd that it's hard to understand how somebody can utter such nonsense.

They don't even bother to aquatint themselves with the basic facts. They'll just use every opportunity to push their extreme ideology.

The virus didn't jump the species barrier on the wildlife market in Wuhan. It jumped the species barrier in one of the industrial-scale wildlife farms promoted by the Chinese government as a "get rich policy" for rural areas, where wild animals that are used to roaming around freely are grown in overcrowded cages.

The problem is industrialization which requires industrial farming. The reason the US government wants to force chlorinated chicken down our throat is that it wants to promote US chicken factories where millions of animals are crowded together. US chicken factories like Chinese pig factories are accelerated virus breeding grounds. There is no way to isolate large farms like a biohazard lab and viruses will invariably escape into the environment to infect other animals and finally humans.

Nature is sending us a message with the coronavirus pandemic and the ongoing climate crisis, according to the UN’s environment chief, Inger Andersen.

Andersen said humanity was placing too many pressures on the natural world with damaging consequences, and warned that failing to take care of the planet meant not taking care of ourselves.

Leading scientists also said the Covid-19 outbreak was a “clear warning shot”, given that far more deadly diseases existed in wildlife, and that today’s civilisation was “playing with fire”. They said it was almost always human behaviour that caused diseases to spill over into humans.

To prevent further outbreaks, the experts said, both global heating and the destruction of the natural world for farming, mining and housing have to end, as both drive wildlife into contact with people.

They also urged authorities to put an end to live animal markets – which they called an “ideal mixing bowl” for disease – and the illegal global animal trade.

Andersen, executive director of the UN Environment Programme, said the immediate priority was to protect people from the coronavirus and prevent its spread. “But our long-term response must tackle habitat and biodiversity loss,” she added.

“Never before have so many opportunities existed for pathogens to pass from wild and domestic animals to people,” she told the Guardian, explaining that 75% of all emerging infectious diseases come from wildlife.

“Our continued erosion of wild spaces has brought us uncomfortably close to animals and plants that harbour diseases that can jump to humans.”

She also noted other environmental impacts, such as the Australian bushfires, broken heat records and the worst locust invasion in Kenya for 70 years. “At the end of the day, [with] all of these events, nature is sending us a message,” Anderson said.

“There are too many pressures at the same time on our natural systems and something has to give,” she added. “We are intimately interconnected with nature, whether we like it or not. If we don’t take care of nature, we can’t take care of ourselves. And as we hurtle towards a population of 10 billion people on this planet, we need to go into this future armed with nature as our strongest ally.”

Human infectious disease outbreaks are rising and in recent years there have been Ebola, bird flu, Middle East respiratory syndrome (Mers), Rift Valley fever, sudden acute respiratory syndrome (Sars), West Nile virus and Zika virus all cross from animals to humans.

“The emergence and spread of Covid-19 was not only predictable, it was predicted [in the sense that] there would be another viral emergence from wildlife that would be a public health threat,” said Prof Andrew Cunningham, of the Zoological Society of London. A 2007 study of the 2002-03 Sars outbreak concluded: “The presence of a large reservoir of Sars-CoV-like viruses in horseshoe bats, together with the culture of eating exotic mammals in southern China, is a timebomb.”

Cunningham said other diseases from wildlife had much higher fatality rates in people, such as 50% for Ebola and 60%-75% for Nipah virus, transmitted from bats in south Asia. “Although, you might not think it at the moment, we’ve probably got a bit lucky with [Covid-19],” he said. “So I think we should be taking this as a clear warning shot. It’s a throw of the dice.”

Wild animals sold at the Wuhan Huanan seafood market in China, linked to first cases of the coronavirus pandemic.

“It’s almost always a human behaviour that causes it and there will be more in the future unless we change,” said Cunningham. Markets butchering live wild animals from far and wide are the most obvious example, he said. A market in China is believed to have been the source of Covid-19.

“The animals have been transported over large distances and are crammed together into cages. They are stressed and immunosuppressed and excreting whatever pathogens they have in them,” he said. “With people in large numbers in the market and in intimate contact with the body fluids of these animals, you have an ideal mixing bowl for [disease] emergence. If you wanted a scenario to maximise the chances of [transmission], I couldn’t think of a much better way of doing it.”

China has banned such markets, and Cunningham said this must be permanent. “However, this needs to be done globally. There are wet markets throughout much of sub-Saharan Africa and a lot of other Asian countries too.” The ease of travel in the modern world exacerbates the dangers, he said, adding: “These days, you can be in a central African rainforest one day and in central London the next.”

Aaron Bernstein, at the Harvard School of Public Health in the US, said the destruction of natural places drives wildlife to live close to people and that climate change was also forcing animals to move: “That creates an opportunity for pathogens to get into new hosts.”

“We’ve had Sars, Mers, Covid-19, HIV. We need to see what nature is trying to tell us here. We need to recognise that we’re playing with fire,” he said.

“The separation of health and environmental policy is a ​dangerous delusion. Our health entirely depends on the climate and the other organisms we share the planet with.”

The billion-dollar illegal wildlife trade is another part of the problem, said John Scanlon, the former secretary general of the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.

Thousands of frozen pangolins lie in a pit before being burnt in Indonesia, after a pangolin bust conducted by the police.

“Importing countries should create a new legal obligation, supported by criminal sanctions, for an importer of wildlife to prove that it was legally obtained under the source country’s national laws,” he said. “If we can blend taking a hard line against transnational organised wildlife criminals, while also opening up new opportunities for local communities, then we will see biodiversity, ecosystems and communities thrive.”

"But what’s more difficult is to be honest with ourselves about what kinds of pandemics we may be brewing through own risky animal-use practices...The conditions in which we often farm animals today—crowding tens of thousands of animals wing-to-wing or snout-to-snout—serve as “amplifiers” for viral pandemics...Indeed, the H1N1 swine flu outbreak of 2009 appears to have originated in a pig confinement operation in North Carolina. And while the H5N1 bird flu outbreak in 1997 evidently originated in Chinese chicken farms (case fatality rate 60 percent), a similar bird flu in the U.S. just five years ago led American poultry farmers to kill tens of millions of their birds..."

"But you can only play viral Russian roulette for so long, which is why public health experts concerned about zoonotic diseases have for years been ringing the alarm about the industrial farming of animals."

This disease, however, did not come from cows, did it? It came from(apparently), eating crazy-ass shit.

That said, I know we do have to move to a more sustainable way of getting protein, meaning insects, although many people are repulsed by the idea. They are extremely efficient, and very easy to raise almost anywhere.

“Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

"only 12% of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus, while 88% of patients who have died have at least one pre-morbidity - many two or three." - Professor Walter Ricciardi, Director of the Department of Public Health

god , i didn't know how gay that song was. I'm like all gayed out right now

"only 12% of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus, while 88% of patients who have died have at least one pre-morbidity - many two or three." - Professor Walter Ricciardi, Director of the Department of Public Health

"only 12% of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus, while 88% of patients who have died have at least one pre-morbidity - many two or three." - Professor Walter Ricciardi, Director of the Department of Public Health

Godstud wrote:Even if we stop eating meat, the animals are still going to be there, no?

Are we going to eradicate the animals/vector?

You think farmers will continue to breed, feed and slaughter trillions of animals every year for no reason? Won't they run out of money or come to their senses pretty quickly?

A third of China's pigs died last year due to disease. Farmers aren't compensated so they sell infected animals anyway, spreading the disease or they dump them in rivers so the symptomless livestock doesn't get culled.

It's inaccurate to say the latest Corona outbreak originated in wildlife. These animals are farmed on large scale, intensive farms.

In China the government owns the banks. In America the banks own the government. Which is better? Let's read newspapers owned by billionaires to find out!

Godstud wrote:This disease, however, did not come from cows, did it? It came from(apparently), eating crazy-ass shit.

That said, I know we do have to move to a more sustainable way of getting protein, meaning insects, although many people are repulsed by the idea. They are extremely efficient, and very easy to raise almost anywhere.

It's part of a pattern, and industrial farming is a huge part of that pattern. It's a plague incubator.

I've eaten a variety of bugs. They will be processed into meal, you'll be surprised how fast people get used to it.

I think the message nature is sending us is that crazy control freak totalitarians are as shit at keeping bioweapons from getting loose as they are at managing nuclear power stations. Wuhan Institute of Virology is China's Chernobyl.

SolarCross wrote:I think the message nature is sending us is that crazy control freak totalitarians are as shit at keeping bioweapons from getting loose as they are at managing nuclear power stations. Wuhan Institute of Virology is China's Chernobyl.

If it came out of that lab it wasn't an accident.

"only 12% of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus, while 88% of patients who have died have at least one pre-morbidity - many two or three." - Professor Walter Ricciardi, Director of the Department of Public Health

late wrote:I've eaten a variety of bugs. They will be processed into meal, you'll be surprised how fast people get used to it.

I'm not eating no fucking bugs.

"only 12% of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus, while 88% of patients who have died have at least one pre-morbidity - many two or three." - Professor Walter Ricciardi, Director of the Department of Public Health

SolarCross wrote:Well if they released it on purpose why do it on their own doorstep? They could put a vial on a plane and drop it anywhere. Tokyo, Seoul, Washington...

If it happens on the doorstep then that looks like an accident to me.

It is hardly anthrax. If it is synthetic it needs work on the mortality rate. Although it is pretty darn efficient at infection I guess. So why are the conspiracists focused on bioterrorism than the more likely scenario of crossing the species divide?

Atlantis wrote:At the one end of the spectrum we have the deniers who want a relentless ...

At the one end of the spectrum we have the deniers who want a relentless expansion of the world' population ,particularly of Muslims and Africans. Plus in western countries a relentless expansion of the disabled, the sick, the obese and the degenerate. And also want a relentless expansion of the health and safety bureaucracy as well as relentless expansion of the woke entitlement culture and the woke Orwellian thought police state.

While I support the impeachment of Salvador Allende, no executive Presidencies, proportional representation and short fixed term parliaments would have been preferable.

B0ycey wrote:It is hardly anthrax. If it is synthetic it needs work on the mortality rate. Although it is pretty darn efficient at infection I guess. So why are the conspiracists focused on bioterrorism than the more likely scenario of crossing the species divide?

If it was an accidental release then it would likely have just been a work-in-progress rather than a perfected weapon. The epicentre is right next door to Wuhan Insitute of Virology, literally China's only level 4 biohazard lab. That's is just a bit too much of coincidence. Wet markets are all over China.

I think the question is why are the totalitarians ignoring the very high probability that their favourite totalitarian regime might just be a bunch of clowns? Oh wait that is a question that answers itself.

Rich wrote:At the one end of the spectrum we have the deniers who want a relentless expansion of the world' population ,particularly of Muslims and Africans. Plus in western countries a relentless expansion of the disabled, the sick, the obese and the degenerate. And also want a relentless expansion of the health and safety bureaucracy as well as relentless expansion of the woke entitlement culture and the woke Orwellian thought police state.